Attain The History Of Philosophy Published By A.C. Grayling Delivered In Leaflet

rate this book higher than Bertrand Russell's classic, Grayling says more using fewer words, that is the main difference, Another difference is that Grayling is much clearer and stricter about what he considers to be philosophy and what not, I recall from Russell's book that he is too permissive with regard to Medieval philosophers much of what they wrote does not deserve the name philosophy.
The same holds true for many continental philosophers, Lastly, Grayling's range is wider though of course he benefits from the passage of time including also a lucid summary not an easy feat of a large chunk of the history of analytic philosophy as well as some continental philosophy.
I do think Grayling should have included a summary of Foucault, surely one of the most important among his ilk, It is strange that he included Derrida, given his lack of any substantial philosophical views and arguments,

Parts that stood out for me were the chapters on Hume and Kant and the chapter on analytic philosophy in its entirety.
I can heartily recommend this to the curious layperson I am one looking for a summary of the rich history of philosophical thought.
This is the third I've read, after Will Durant's Story of Philosophy in my earlys and Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy a couple of years ago.
I consumed them all in audiobook form because life,

The history of philosophy is one of those subjects that is such of flood of ideas that after such a book you end up only clinging to a few scraps of insight while most of flows over the rim of your overwhelmed mind.
. . it's just too much to file neatly away, And so I think it's worth wading through it repeatedly over the course of your life, hopefully accumulating a little more wisdom each time.


Even though it hasn't been long since I read Russell's work, much of it had already faded from memory, But that book is the most obvious one to compare this one to, The two primary differences with that book are Grayling's deliberate exclusion of purely theological thought, and the inclusion of the not insignificant work done in theth century since Russell's publication not least Russell himself!.
Additionally in this new book Grayling includes worthwhile sketches of Indian, Chinese and Arabic/Persian philosophy,

Despite those additions, I also found Grayling's treatment of the classic philosophers common to all these histories to be fresh and engaging such that I still felt I was almost always learning something new.
So if you've read Russell's book and are wondering whether this one will be redundant: I would say no,

For the most part Grayling's approach is to write a chapter on each major thinker in chronological order, Each chapter starts with a short summary of the place of their ideas in the context of adjacent thinkers, followed by an often entertaining biographical sketch, then taking a deeper dive into their ideas, contributions and legacy.
I really liked the rhythm of this template, which was a gentle switching back and forth between biography and technical philosophy each playing usually off the other.
This history of philosophy is full of compelling and strange characters,

There are of course deviations from the plan where necessary, Some chapters are named after schools of thought or groups of related thinkers, containing smaller portraits of the associated philosophers or summaries of ideas with no reference to a particular thinker.
This becomes more frequent later in the book, especially as the number of active philosophers multiply in theth century,

Grayling makes it clear from the outset what he has decided falls within his definition of philosophy, In particular he chooses to exclude religiouslyinfluenced thought, which he thesaurusily describes multiple times! as "theology, theodicy, exegesis, casuistry, apologetics or hermeneutics, but.
. . not philosophy". As someone not religiously inclined myself, this was a great relief and a selling point,

This meant that the section on the middle ages with mercifully short compared to Russell's book, although certainly not devoid of content! Regrettably I felt that while sparing the reader these angelsonpins debates, we are served an oversized portion when it comes to Grayling's own area of study: the philosophy of language inth century Analytical philosophy.
This section seemed to get much more into the weeds compared to the other sections and I found myself unable to keep up with the jargon here and tuning out as a result.
And for the record I find the philosophy of language and its neighbouring pursuits like computer science particularly interesting, This was happily the exception rather than the rule for the book, which for the most part seemed to keep things at a reasonable difficult level for a motivated layperson.


Grayling spends a considerable amount of time musing on what is fair to include and apologising for leaving people out.
A few times particularly duringth century continental philosophy he takes on a quick tour of a "salon des refusés", giving quick sketches of important thinkers who don't meet the criteria as philosophers but who remain influential writers or critics nonetheless.
For some, like Hannah Arendt, who refused the title of philosopher, he seems positively regretful,
Grayling is conscious that he is writing a history of western philosophy, which is an integrated flow or web of ideas and influences.
But there are other philosophical traditions in the world which have developed mostly though not entirely independently, He spends the last few chapters on these, but it would be a mistake to dismiss these as optional appendices, Grayling has put a worthy amount of effort into  wonderfully distilled summaries of Chinese, Indian and Arabic/Persian philosophy the latter his name for what has otherwise been called "Philosophy in the Islamic world".


Grayling blames language barriers as the reason for the relative shallowness of these summaries, although I'm sure there are many deeper dives into each to be found in English.
That said, these work very well as "short histories" of the traditions in each of these cultures, As to the quality and accuracy of these depictions, I'll have to leave criticism to the experts, of which I am certainly not one.


He also makes an attempt at covering "African" philosophy but spends most of that chapter explaining why he can't having painted himself into a corner with his earlier definitions of what does and doesn't count as philosophy.
And what comes from Africa, as he sees it, while of enormous value, counts more as folk wisdom, myth, religion etc, Or simply western philosophy being done in by Africans in postcolonial times, Again, I'll leave the experts to judge the fairness of his assessment, and I'm sure they will,

Overall, this book is a massive achievement, I have no idea how one person can do all the reading required to distill so much into one volume, There are some fascinating people and mindbending ideas to be found in this book, It's a wellwritten, engaging ode to one of humanity's most important endeavours: trying to understand who we are, what on Earth is going on, how we could possibly know any of this, and what we should be doing about it.
This book was much harder to read than I initially expected, I expected something along the lines of a history of science book, but this was so much more than that,

The author tries to explain the main points of philosophical ideas, tracing their evolution beginning from the presocratics in Ancient Greece of theth century BCE continuing through to the analytic and continental philosophy of theth century and then providing short exposes of the Indian, Chinese and ArabicPersian philosophical traditions of thought.
He attempts to not just offer a superficial presentation of these ideas, but to actually explain them to an adequate degree for the reader to get a picture of the directions the thought of each thinker was moving towards, and spark interest in the further study of those ideas.


From his writing it becomes evident how each subsequent or parallel thinker is to some often large extent aware of all the ideas that preceded him and is, in essence, in active conversation with them.
It is also evident how the thought of each thinker is shaped by his social/historical/technological/scientific environment, but also how philosophical ideas themselves shape that environment to a farfromnegligible degree.
As the centuries go by, and as a great body of thought gradually accumulates, the ideas become even more intricate and complex.


So, as mentioned in the beginning, even to very roughly wrap ones head around the ideas discussed can be quite a challenging endeavor.
But understanding some of the ideas, and also forming a again, very rough and undoubtedly very simplistic picture of their development through time, can be very rewarding.


I absolutely loved this book, Much more than I expected before I started reading it or suspected when I was a few dozens of pages into it.
It really helped me form the opinion that devoting some of my time in reading and trying to understand philosophy may be a meaningful investment.
It doesnt lend itself to light reading, but if youre willing to put in the effort to get a general idea of what philosophy is really about, I could not recommend it enough.
It is certainly worthwile to plow through a history of philosophy or science every once in a while, It helps to put things into context, to relativize the often quite considerable egos of these creative, solitary writers,

This one by Grayling is certainly a lot of fun, And /long/!hours on audible It is well written stylistically and manages to convey something of the depth, breadth and variety of the philosophical tradition.
Unexpectedly interesting were two later sections on Indian and Chinese philosophy which, though they were presented as rather primitive and Grayling emphasizes his nonexpert status with regards to them, are able to put a thoughtprovoking spin on ideas that resemble those of the west through subtle differences in vocabulary.

However, though I suppose that such a thing is inevitable in this kind of work, the thought of some mayor philosophers I am thinking of Leibniz, Spinoza, Schopenhauer and Peirce in particular really /was not/ represented accurately or completely in this text, and the discription of them ventured into caricature at times.
This shortcoming seems to be connected to Grayling's frankly quite boring conception of what 'philosophy' actually means and what 'kind of questions' are properly part of its domain.
He actually writes at one point that his conception of philosophy is largely determined by the 'practice of philosophy departments' I paraphrase, that is to say by a general gest of the 'expert' / folk opinion of academic philosophers.
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Last but not least, though the book actually has a lot to offer more than expected! in terms of recent developments in philosophy

which it is always risky to include in any 'history', I would have liked it very much if many of the interesting relatively new domains in analytic philosophy especially subdomains of nonclassical logics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science would have been given as prominent a place as other almostcontemporary 'schools' have, such as deconstructivism and feminism.


All in all: an interesting read with some very much worthwile anecdotes, Good as an introduction to the subject, I think, though the length of the book will likely put off the true novice.
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